I believe they can understand speech. Cats are trainable to do a variety of things and respond to verbal commands.

I think the issue is they are by nature not as "programmed" as dogs to accept training easily. I know for a fact my cats know their names. If I call one name or another the appropriate cat will usually turn its head to look at me to see what it is I am on about. The other cat ignores the name completely unless I call her name then she responds similarly. Neither will come when I call...just acknowledge they heard it.

I think the issue is they are by nature not as "programmed" as dogs to accept training easily. I know for a fact my cats know their names. If I call one name or another the appropriate cat will usually turn its head to look at me to see what it is I am on about. The other cat ignores the name completely unless I call her name then she responds similarly. Neither will come when I call...just acknowledge they heard it.

That's about what I figured. I think she's not a pet so much as a third roommate who doesn't pay rent.

My cat understands he is doing something wrong if I do the "Tssst" sound. Typically he won't stop though. I have to get up and approach him before he runs off. About 50 percent of the time, after he runs off he will hide and then attack my feet.

I had "Puppy-Cat" a Siamese who was raised by a mother dog after his own mother rejected him. He understand "retrieve" and would go get his ball so I could throw it and he could bring it back. When I said "Go Out" he would go to the front door and let me put his leash on. "Bedtime" and he would run to his floormat which was beside my floormat.

My family had a cat who was so attentive to our talking about food that we had to be guarded with words like "cheese" and "treat" because, once he heard one of the magic words, he'd get so frantically hyperactive and bouncing-off-the-walls ecstatic that we'd have little choice but to go ahead and give him something.

Then my Mom got the idea of spelling out the magic words, so "treat" became "T-R-E-A-T". He twigged to it immediately.

I believe they can understand speech. Cats are trainable to do a variety of things and respond to verbal commands.

My sorely missed Lenny responded to a variety of verbal commands and learned several of the standard "dog tricks" such as "sit", "beg", "speak", and "fetch" (as "go get the birdy").

He of course responded best to his name and reward words: "suppertime", "cookie", and "Kill it! Kill it!" (which referred to flies trapped by the window. He loved killing flies.)

ETA: He would also often only very begrudgingly do "sit", "beg" and "speak". If you weren't waving a slice of bacon, he'd probably ignore you. He understood the commands and would do them, but only if there was a worthwhile reward.

ETA 2: My other cat, Squiggy, seems too stupid to understand most commands and only seems to respond to his name and "suppertime" (and that's only because Lenny used to).

Catch a dog in the act of cleaning out the kitchen trash or giving your dining room table a leg-ectomy. Shout at dog, repeatedly call it bad, swat it with a rolled up newspaper. Dog says to itself "hmmm, I have displeased the master. I should not do that again."

Catch a cat in the act of transforming your shower curtain into a hanging fringe. Shout at cat, repeatedly call it bad, give it a quick blast of cold water from the hand held shower nozzle. Cat says to itself "hmmm, I have displeased my servant. I should only redecorate the bathroom when he is not around."

My cat understands he is doing something wrong if I do the "Tssst" sound. Typically he won't stop though. I have to get up and approach him before he runs off. About 50 percent of the time, after he runs off he will hide and then attack my feet.

Our younger cat Phoenix definitely understands "No." She loves to intimidate our older cat, but if I see Phoenix getting ready to pounce, I will say "no, no, no" and she understands that it means trouble for her if she carries out her nefarious plans. The older cat also seems to understand that she's not getting in trouble, Phoenix is. They also both respond when we call their names. That doesn't mean that either of them are completely obedient, just that they recognize the speech.

I can deliver the line with any intonation or accent, but when my dog hears, "Shall we go out then?", he knows exactly what I am saying, and will go and get his ball, or whatever he wants to take with him.

When I was a kid, my family owned a cat who knew certain words, and like other posters have said, typically it seems like they only learn and/or react to words that have direct meaning for them. So they may well understand what you mean if you teach them what "sit" is, but if they don't want to sit, they might ignore you.

You could look straight at the cat (to avoid other cues like glancing at the item) and ask "Where's the _______" and she'd go look. "Treat" would send her to the kitchen to pace under the counter that held the treat containers. "Mouse" would make her run to a baseboard that once had a mousehole in it, and which had been covered over with a new baseboard but still had hints of mouse activity and sound. "Bird" would have her running to a window, typically the bathroom window in the back since that had a good view of the bird feeder. Of course we'd accidentally trained her to learn those words in the usual fashion, talking about "treat" when giving her one, asking if she saw a "bird" when she was crouched in the window, eyeing the feeder's occupants, etc.

(On a side note, it seems like ferrets can learn words similarly. I even taught one of our ferrets to sit up on the command. Since they have teeny little attention spans, I only ever bothered with the one. )

Mr. Balls understands a number of commands, and aloof cat cliches aside, he responds to them rather intelligently. He knows that "get down" means to scrunch below my computer monitor if he's on my desk, but to jump to the floor if he's on my lap. He knows that "be nice" means to retract his claws if he's playing too rough, and "don't fight" means the flea shampoo experience is only going to get worse for him if he doesn't stop resisting.

They're remarkably perceptive. He can tell whether I'm reaching out to pet him or play-fight with him based on body language clues that I'm not aware of myself. He always knows though. It's kinda creepy.

Our old cat Cayuse took way too many trips to the vet during one trying year. We always managed to get her in her crate easily enough. We kept the crate out so we wouldn't signal our intentions in advance. Find her, scoop her up, stuff her in the crate. No prob.

One time, I was singing while getting ready to go. The song started out to the dog, who we crated while we were gone: "you put the dog in the box and shake it all up" etc. When I went for Cayuse, I started singing, "you put the cat in the box and shake it all up." By the time I got up the stairs to find the cat, the cat was under the bed. It took me 5 minutes to get her to come out. (She always came running whenever we whistled a tune, preferably Summertime from Porgy and Bess.)

I grew up with a dog, and I know that dogs don't really "understand" human speech, but they can learn their name and commands like, "No teeth!" and "Sit!" and "No!"

Well, some dogs can.

I have two dogs, and one of them understands "No!" perfectly well, while the other just stares stupidly at me wagging his tail. And yet, he's perfectly able to figure out what the sound of the treat jar being opened means. Go figure.

And if you say "No!" while squirting them, they rapidly learn that "No!" means imminent water attack and they'll run for the hills. Effective.

My cat not only clearly knows her name, but understands differences in tone of voice when it's said.

She likes to jump up on the counter where the other cat's food is and eat it (the food, I mean, not the other cat). If I see her on the floor making ready to jump up there and I say, "Misty" in that a short, low-toned way that parents use when a child is doing something wrong, the cat will utter this little "maow-maow" sound (like, "Aw, you never let me have any fun...") and walk away.

But if she's just laying down across the room, and I say "Misty!" in a more high-pitched, friendly sort of way, she will often trot over to me.

Both cats clearly know what "stop it!" means, too. If one is clawing at the rug, and I yell "Stop it!", she stops. The other one usually gives me a look like, "What? I'm not doing anything." Mind you, a little while later the former will again claw at the rug. So cats clearly can understand words and even tone, but apparently have great difficulty with the concept of applying that meaning to anything beyond the right here-and-now.

BoyKitty knows his name, I just don't think he always cares that he's being spoken to. Cinnamon doesn't seem to have any idea that we have a word that we associate with her. I think I probably spend more time trying to learn their language and communicating with them than they do with me. Maybe it's that dogs feel more dependent on their working relationship with us for their food and comfort, and a cat never really forgets that they can do without us so they have never learned to put the effort into learning commands. Not that a dog couldn't hunt for it's own food if it had to, I think they just don't fully realize it to the extent that a cat does.

Perceptive - that's the right word for cats. My two cats will come when called (I usually get both cats for the price of one, because there might be tuna involved!), and they stay off of the coffee table and kitchen counters because I've trained them to stay off of there (well, they stay off when I'm around - I can leave a piece of chicken on my plate on the coffee table and come back to it untouched). I trained them not with a squirt bottle but with the loud "psst" and clap my hands method - they don't like being startled. I used the squirt bottle on my cat, Feather, once, and she looked at me like she was going to pack her bags and leave. They absolutely communicate with their humans - they have a lot of vocalizations, and they use all of them on us. My cat even sings with me - I sing the "Featheroni Baloney" song to her, and she mews between lines.

"Mouse" would make her run to a baseboard that once had a mousehole in it, and which had been covered over with a new baseboard but still had hints of mouse activity and sound.

[total derailment]Wow, you've actually seen a mousehole in a baseboard? Did it look like a cartoon hole -- sort of a micro tunnel -- or more of a round hole a mouse could squeeze through?[/td]

Russells aren't the only opinionated dogs. The resident salukis are perfectly capable of understanding commands they're familiar with, and their names, but respond only when it suits them. The anatolian, OTOH, is more willing to do what you tell her. Reluctantly if it doesn't involve fun or food, but she does it.

The thing with training cats is that they require clearcut incentive to take to the training, whereas for dogs, the fact that you're giving them attention and appear to be pleased with their behaviour is usually sufficient.

If the cat is not interested in playing fetch with you, then you'll never be able to train her into returning the paper ball until you make it worth her while.

Spray bottle. It's the only thing that actually works for our three, except for actually getting up and chasing them away from the victim of their current malice.

So I thought but of the two cats I have, only one seems to be scared of the spray bottle.

Weird but the other one likes getting sprayed on his butt hole. When I pick up the spray bottle. the one who does not like it, quietly slinks away. The other one however comes forward and turns his back on me and waits with tail raised until I spray his ass with water. A couple of squirts and he trots away some distanceand then sits down and licks his butt dry.

I believe that cats, like dogs or people have varying degrees of intelligence. All the cats I have now respond to their respective names. They understand NO!, but that may be tone of voice.
One of them seems to understand "Bring it here." He fetches.

I had one cat that seemed to know several words like, "outside" "treat" and "no claws."
He always seemed to know when we were talking about him. If anyone said "Vet" he would hide for hours.

[total derailment]Wow, you've actually seen a mousehole in a baseboard? Did it look like a cartoon hole -- sort of a micro tunnel -- or more of a round hole a mouse could squeeze through?[/td]

I was young enough that I don't really remember the mousehole itself well, but IIRC it was small (like quarter size or less), started at floor level, and was kind of oblong vertically but not the perfect mouse archway like in cartoons. I think the new baseboard/molding was a redecoration in the house as this stuff was very thick, and strong wood; you could see (because it didn't sit entirely flush with the wall around that point) down a little ways and see the top of what looked like another hole, maybe being scratched up in an attempt to get up and over the tall baseboard before giving up and finding a better entry elsewhere.

This provided our cats with a tantalizing spot - they could hear the pitter-patter/scritching of a mouse more easily around there, smell them more easily there, and at some point in the past it had been a mouse-hole, so the cat in question would zero in on that spot as "mouse!" (They would occasionally kill mice in the basement, but couldn't get there unless we let them downstairs.)

Catch a dog in the act of cleaning out the kitchen trash or giving your dining room table a leg-ectomy. Shout at dog, repeatedly call it bad, swat it with a rolled up newspaper. Dog says to itself "hmmm, I have displeased the master. I should not do that again."

Catch a cat in the act of transforming your shower curtain into a hanging fringe. Shout at cat, repeatedly call it bad, give it a quick blast of cold water from the hand held shower nozzle. Cat says to itself "hmmm, I have displeased my servant. I should only redecorate the bathroom when he is not around."

Actually, our dog says to himself, "Gee, I'd better not get caught doing this again!" and does it only when we're not around. Of course, then he acts so guilty that he essentially leads us to the scene of the crime when we get back.

The cats all know when we're telling them to quit something, but they all respond differently. Say I come upon one cat eating out of another's bowl (a daily occurrence). Socks, the big black-and-white tailless cat, will run and hide. His attitude seems to be that I don't want him to eat. Nico, the Siamese cross, will brazenly meow at me and go to her own bowl as if she's just made a perfectly understandable mistake. Cisco, the giant gray-and-white tabby who is the perpetual kitten of the group, will meow at me piteously and try to go back to eating the other cat's food because, obviously, his own bowl is empty and he has no choice! They react in much the same way when I catch them doing anything wrong: Socks acts as though I'm an ogre who plans to kill him, Nico seems to be saying, "What? I'm not doing anything!" and Cisco will pause and then continue the behavior because, really, he wants to.

I'd say the cats understand me just as well as the dog does. They just don't seem to be quite as interested in what I have to say.

Let's just say our two cats have been so tuned into what we're saying that we've sometimes wondered if they really do understand English...

even if we're speaking in a completely normal voice, and we're speaking only to each other (and not to cats), they seem to know when we talk about them. And when we start commenting how one of them needs to lose weight, the fat cat usually gives us a disgusted hurt look and leaves the room. it's uncanny.

Wow. Just... wow. I would not have thought that was possible. Mine can't even grasp the concept of, "When I scratch the couch, my humans move me to this tall cylinder and run my claws over it. I should scratch here instead."

I believe they can understand speech. Cats are trainable to do a variety of things and respond to verbal commands.

I think the issue is they are by nature not as "programmed" as dogs to accept training easily.

I've always believed based on my small knowledge of evolution and biology, that dogs are more easily "trained" by something with more "dominance". Domestic dogs descend from wild pack animals that instinctively give way before the pack's "alpha". As the human, you (should) become the alpha. I've seen situations in which the presumed "master" didn't do this right and the dog became a *big* problem.

Although some cat species are pack animals, many more are solitary hunters. I suspect that domestic cats came from a much more solitary type of hunter. I've even read somewhere that cats weren't "domesticated" in the sense that humans grabbed wild ones and bred them to be domestic.

Instead, the cats started living in human environments, most likely in Egypt, and mostly likely because they hunted the rodents that attacked stored grain. The Egyptians let them remain because they were better protection for rodents than anything else. Over time, human and cat began to tolerate each other.

So dogs instinctively want to figure out what you want them to do, while cats just co-habitate with the humans that feed them. Perhaps cats in the wild were sufficiently non-solitary that they want company, and humans provide it. Of course, different varieties of dogs have varying levels of intelligence, depending on the breeding that we've done.

My car Sammi understood words, I can remember catching her about to jump on my bed, I said "you wait till I put your blankey down missy!" and she sat down and waited till I put her blankey down before jumping onto the bed.

I'd a cat years ago who could tell the time. I'd tell him "be back by 9!" when I was letting him out, and he would be. Didn't matter what time I said he always appeared at the right time. I hid in the kitchen [no lights on] and at the appointed time, bing he jump up on the window sill ...

Sharon was the only one in the house allowed to feed Badcat (Badcat had a name, but nobody used it) since Badcat would otherwise beg multiple bowls of food throughout the day. But once I came back late, and Sharon wasn't around, and Badcat was mewling quite piteously by his bowl, even though he knew that this was generally no use. So I pointed my finger at him, and said "You tell me the truth now! Did Sharon already feed you?"